Hostel Returns
Sequel set for macabre horror hit.
Lions Gate Films and Sony's Screen Gems are, not surprisingly, keen to crank out a sequel to the surprise horror hit Hostel. The modestly-budgeted movie debuted at the top of the North American box office this weekend with around $20 million.
The studios, which will once again split production and distribution responsibilities, are hoping to strike while the iron is hot and rush the film into production -- much like Lions Gate successfully did with Saw and Saw II. Hostel 2 would reportedly be put on the fast track for an early 2007 release.
Industry insider mag Variety reveals that filmmaker Eli Roth is in negotiations to return, but story ideas for the possible second installment in the grisly series are being kept under wraps.
Hostel stars Jay Hernandez and Derek Richardson as two American college buddies Paxton and Josh who go backpacking through Europe and get caught up in a sick and twisted game where rich and powerful men from around the world brutally torture their captives.
'Hostel' Yields A Sequel — And Perhaps A Few Babies
Director hopes to hammer out second gory script, start shooting this summer.
HOLLYWOOD — Four months ago, they gutted, grossed and gored their way to box-office success with one of the most excruciatingly graphic horror films ever made.
This week, with the DVD release of "Hostel," the film's director and star plan to keep fans gleefully vomiting and fainting for years to come.
"Somebody puked, somebody passed out, and somebody went to the hospital," star Jay Hernandez said Tuesday at a release party for the unrated DVD, fondly looking back at the film's theatrical run. "When I heard of people doing that in theaters, I was pretty psyched."
"I've gotten two kinds of reports," said writer/director Eli Roth. "One type of report is that people throw up or pass out or get sick to their stomach, and another report is that a lot of people get [lucky] watching 'Hostel.' I swear to God, people have told me that they brought a date to see the movie, and then the date is grabbing their hand, and they had their head buried in their date's chest the whole time. The girl was too freaked out, she didn't want to go home alone, and the guy brought her home, and it was like, 'Yeah, it worked out. I closed the deal.' So I do think that nine months from now, we will have some medical emergencies and some 'Hostel' babies."
Roth plans to cut himself off from the outside world to begin writing a 'Hostel' sequel this week, recapturing the hermitlike existence that helped him pen the first film.
"I've got to write it," he said. "I've been doing a world tour with 'Hostel,' doing press. It has been opening in every other country, and I have been making notes. But [this week] I am really going to unplug my phone, shut off my e-mail, and write the script. And we are going to shoot it this summer."
After the high body count of the first film, the difficulties of negotiating with returning actors is one torture Roth will be able to avoid. As of now, only leading man Hernandez is set to return.
"I think there is going to be definitely more of a revenge element involved, but aside from that, I'm as excited and curious as anybody else about what the story is going to be," Hernandez said.
Roth said even he doesn't know where "Hostel II" could take him, but he does know one thing: It will start immediately after the final scene of the first film.
"I want to pick up and continue in the story exactly where the last one left off," the director said. "Other than 'Porky's II: The Next Day,' you don't really see that many movies where they pick up at the moment where the last one stopped. I really want it to feel like a part one and a part two more than a sequel."
"I think that the trauma that he has experienced will definitely affect him in a negative way," Hernandez said of his character, Paxton, last seen exacting bloody revenge despite being a few fingers short of a hand.
Featuring four commentary tracks, a behind-the-scenes feature (shot by Roth's brother) and an extra 30 seconds of "the eye goo — the stuff dripping out that the ratings board had me cut," the director promised that "Hostel" fans will have plenty to keep themselves occupied until the sequel arrives.
Roth did pass along one small request for anyone who gets lucky while watching his DVD at home: "I would like the babies to be named 'Hostel' or 'Vomit,' " he laughed. "That would really be a nice compliment to me."
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'Hostel' Director Promises 'Plenty Of Blood And Torture' In Sequel
Source: MTVNews 06.09.2006 6:00 AM EDT
CULVER CITY, California — Writers are a superstitious bunch. Some compose their best work in dimly lit rooms, while others prefer Internet cafes. Many insist on sitting in the same chair, using the same computer or even going old-school with pencils and a legal pad or (gasp!) a typewriter. One of the hottest writer/directors in Hollywood, in fact, has seen such superstition turn him into the most solitary man this side of O.J. Simpson.
Eli Roth became a hot commodity six months ago with the release of "Hostel," a demented, depraved, delightfully perverse flick dreamed up over several months of hermit-like seclusion. Naturally, when it came time for a sequel, the manic 34-year-old told MTV News six weeks ago that he was determined to "unplug [his] phone, shut off [his] e-mail and write the script" (see " 'Hostel' Yields A Sequel — And Perhaps A Few Babies").
This week, Roth briefly emerged from a Howard Hughes-like exile to storm the MTV Movie Awards, an appearance so last-minute that someone else's credentials were hanging around his neck.
While sneaking a long-overdue peek at the light of day, Roth was all too eager to offer his fans some details.
"I shaved today for the first time in three weeks because I haven't left my house — I've been working on the script for 'Hostel 2,' " Roth reported. "I don't think 'Hostel' is gonna be winning any Oscars, so it's nice that we got a Best Frightened Performance nomination for Derek Richardson."
Those who've seen the movie will remember Richardson as the dude who gets his Achilles tendons sliced open. Because of that and the ensuing bloodiness, let's just say that Richardson wouldn't be the best person to ask about sequel possibilities. Roth, however, is looking forward to his second chapter.
"I'm writing 'Hostel 2' for girls — it's going to be three girls this time," he revealed. "They're studying in Italy for the summer, and they get lured, and they go back to ... well, we're going to go back to a lot of familiar places."
Through the existence of this Italian hostel, Roth plans to reveal that the Slovakian stopover from the first flick is actually part of a chain — kinda like a Motel 6, but with decapitations instead of a continental breakfast.
"It's all part of the organization; they've got the whole thing set up all over the place, and they have different scouts," Roth said. "We're going to learn a lot more about how it all works. In 'Hostel 2,' you're really going to see the ins and outs of the whole organization and how they get people and kill them.
"And there will be plenty of blood and torture," he added with a sadistic grin. "I can tell you that."
"Hostel" didn't leave a lot of actors' story lines open for sequel possibilities, but Jay Hernandez did survive — at least, most of him did. Roth happily reported that Hernandez's Paxton has been written into the film and will be encountering the three girls in Italy.
"Jay has a few less fingers, so it might be difficult for him to blend in," the director said. "But yeah, he's not out of the woods yet."
Roth's script begins the moment the original "Hostel" left off, a tribute to the similarly timed second chapters of his beloved "Halloween" and "Porky's."
" 'Hostel 2' is going to start literally with the next cut, and you're going to see [Paxton] at the same time. You'll see that he's totally messed-up from the experience. It's completely wrecked him, and his life is in ruins."
Hernandez will express his mental collapse in some of the tossing-and-turning scenes Roth is composing.
"You know, when they have a sequel, and you see the guy and he's having nightmares and can't sleep and is going crazy," the filmmaker said, sounding as if Hernandez might finally turn into the villain Roth wanted him to become in an early draft of the original flick.
Although he has spent most of the last few weeks alone, Roth has made time to once again solicit some advice from an equally twisted mind.
"Quentin [Tarantino] was really helpful when I told him the story idea. I was like, 'What do you think about this?' and he's like, 'Oh man, what if we did it with girls?,' " Roth said of the "Hostel" producer. "I saw Quentin last night, and we started to talk about some different death scenes, and anytime I'm like, 'Oh, what if we killed someone like this?,' he's got three other different ways to kill them. When he reads the script, it inspires a bunch of things."
Roth hopes to begin shooting in August and to release the film in January 2007.
With all those details revealed, Roth once again looked forward to unplugging the phone, shutting off the e-mail and finishing up his script. But he eyeballed the entrance to the Movie Awards and reminded himself of one last thing he was eager to do beforehand.
"If we win, that's great, but if Derek Richardson loses to Paris Hilton, I get to make fun of him for the rest of his life and say that Paris Hilton is a better actor than him," Roth laughed. "So it's kind of a win-win situation." (Neither Richardson nor Hilton got lucky: The award went to Jennifer Carpenter for "The Exorcism of Emily Rose.")
Quote from: modage on June 09, 2006, 09:40:09 AM
'Hostel' Director Promises 'Plenty Of Blood And Torture hype' In Sequel
fixed.
he is definitely skilled at selling himself. i wish his movies could catch up to the hype. Eli Roth is the modern day PT Barnum.
Trio checks rates in Gems' 'Hostel'
Lauren German, Heather Matarazzo and Bijou Phillips are in varying stages of negotiations to star in "Hostel 2," which Eli Roth is directing for Screen Gems. The first "Hostel," which was released this year and grossed about $50 million domestically, followed three men who end up in a Slovakian hostel which serves as a front for an organization specializing in torture. This time, the story follows three women who, while studying abroad for the summer, learn the grim truth behind the Slovakian hostel and its international counterparts. German would play a wealthy girl trying to figure out her next step in life, Phillips would be her best friend and Matarazzo will be a tag-along.
The fate of Saw 2 awaits this.
gee i wonder which one will play the nerd?
Welcome to the Hostel: Part II
Source: Lionsgate
Lionsgate has revealed new details about writer-director Eli Roth's Hostel sequel. The horror film, now titled Hostel: Part II, stars Lauren German, Bijou Phillips, Roger Bart, Richard Bugl, Vera Jordanova, Heather Mattarazzo, Stanislav Ianevski and Milan Knazko. Here is how the studio describes the film:
Last January, writer/director Eli Roth terrified moviegoers with the blood-drenched "Hostel," which catapulted to the top of the box office charts and became the first Number One film of 2006. One year later, Roth takes us back to where it all began, and deeper into the darkest recesses of the human mind.
In "Hostel: Part II," three young Americans studying art in Rome set off for a weekend trip when they run into a beautiful model from one of their classes. Also on her way to an exotic destination, the gorgeous European invites the coeds to come along, assuring them they will be able to relax and rejuvenate.
Will the girls find the oasis they are looking for? Or are they poised to become victims for hire, pawns in the fantasies of the sick and privileged from around the world who secretly travel here to savor more grisly pursuits?
With "Hostel," Eli Roth cemented the cutting-edge credentials he earned with his debut feature "Cabin Fever" (2002). In "Hostel: Part II," Roth invites fans to take another frightening trip where suppressed urges – once unleashed – have chilling consequences.
Hostel: Part II is scheduled for a January 5, 2007 release.
Quote from: MacGuffin on October 04, 2006, 01:22:20 AM
Will the girls find the oasis they are looking for? Or are they poised to become victims for hire, pawns in the fantasies of the sick and privileged from around the world who secretly travel here to savor more grisly pursuits?
No. cause how do you poise for that.
Thanks
Will they?! Will they?!
Source: MTV
You might have heard all kinds of start dates and release dates for "Hostel 2," the sequel to last January's gory sleeper hit. According to series star Jay Hernandez, much of the confusion revolves around his suddenly packed schedule, which he's been happily dealing with since his finger-licking-good performance made him so in demand. Still, he's doing his best to find the time to fly to Prague and shoot some scenes before the flick finishes filming. "I will say this: I'm having difficulty with my schedule because I am on a TV show right now, so that is one thing that we're trying to work out," Hernandez said of his role on ABC's "Six Degrees." Luckily for "Hostel" fans — but maybe not for Hernandez — "Degrees" doesn't have an episode running this week and looks to be nearing cancellation. "Hopefully it all works out the way we want it to," Hernandez said, "but in terms of the second 'Hostel,' I think it's really going to turn out the way we want it to. [Writer/director] Eli [Roth] is really trying to amp it up, if that's at all possible, because the first one is really horrific and gruesome, but he's working hard to make [it gorier]." The second flick will deal with female guests (Heather Matarazzo, Bijou Phillips and Lauren German) taking a room at the horrific hostel chain, and Hernandez thinks that twist will put a different slant on things. "A lot of the stuff that happened with Paxton and Josh [from the original movie] people considered sort of sexist and misogynistic, so it's going to be interesting to see what the women do," he insisted, adding that if his character does return, it won't be a problem for Hernandez to wear something over his hand to help CGI artists remove his "missing" fingers in post-production. "Duct tape," he laughed. "Duct tape fixes everything." With the studio insisting that April 2007 is a firm release date, and Hernandez searching for an opening, Roth is currently on the Prague set slicing and dicing it all together.
Trailer for Hostel: Part II is in German
Source: Variety
Lionsgate will release the trailer for Hostel: Part II in German, reports Variety. The trailer debuts tonight on MTV and bows in 3000+ theaters on Friday with the release of Saw III.
The "Hostel" sequel will be in English and is set in Prague, where Czech is the language of choice. So why German?
"German is more guttural and harsh," said Lionsgate co-president of marketing Tim Palen. "I think a lot of people will be taken aback, but with the success of the first 'Hostel,' there will be no confusion as to whether the movie is in English."
Palen said the trailer makes the film seem more European and exotic. It's also a nod to the anti-American sentiment sweeping Europe and beyond.
Teaser Trailer here. (http://playlist.yahoo.com/makeplaylist.dll?id=1500611&sdm=web&qtw=480&qth=300)
'Hostel: Part II' Will Be 'Far More Disturbing,' Eli Roth Reports
Roth reveals details from sequel's set; admits he's screamed like a little girl.
Source: MTV
Not too long ago, Eli Roth's guy-next-door looks could easily be mistaken for any thirtysomething film geek, over-caffeinated mall walker, or even drummer-for-hire — a credential mix-up at the last MTV Movie Awards had him walking the red carpet largely unnoticed, wearing a nametag meant for Gnarls Barkley's drummer. Then came "Hostel," an icepick to the eyeball of every paying customer, which had half running for the bathroom holding their mouths and others longing for a return trip to the dankest, most damnable dungeons of Slovakia. Suddenly, no discussion on the future of horror would be complete without discussing the Boston-born governor of gore.
This past weekend, millions watched the bizarre German-language teaser trailer that Roth released as a first look at "Hostel: Part II," one of 2007's most anticipated releases. Now, with an April opening in place and his favorite holiday in mind, Roth checked in from the set of the sequel to give us some never-before-revealed details, the story behind the trailer and why he's hoping that he'll soon be mistaken once again — this time, for Scott Baio.
MTV: The "Hostel: Part II" trailer played before "Saw III" this weekend, and now it's all over the Internet. So how's the filming going?
Eli Roth: Well, this is our last week of shooting in Prague, and then we're going to Iceland next week, and then I start editing after that. It's been a bloody good time, I'll tell you that. The big question that everyone is asking is: How are you going to top the first one, in terms of gore and scare? After what we've shot here, there's no question that this movie will be far more disturbing than the first one.
MTV: In this movie, you're going to have three girls sucked into the "Hostel" underground. Tell us about the actresses and their characters.
Roth: Heather Matarazzo — she was in "Welcome to the Dollhouse" and "Princess Diaries" — she plays this girl who's a bit of a space cadet, who is in her own world, but she plays her with this wonderful manic energy that has these extreme highs and lows. You just know she's on some kind of antidepressant. And Bijou Phillips — I think people know her more for her reputation than they do for her acting, even though she has been in "Bully" and a number of films — she's so unbelievably funny and so sharp and so tough; it's horrifying watching horrible things happen to her. Then there's Lauren German, who most people don't know by name, but they know her as the girl who blew her head off in "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" remake. She's actually really funny, and so sweet and so likeable and vulnerable. But then she gives a performance that is at that level, even more intense than she was for those five minutes she was in "Chainsaw" — she's like that for 45 minutes here.
MTV: According to many published synopses, the girls get lured into the world of torture by a male model. Any truth to that?
Roth: No. IMDb is a fount of misinformation. Guys are going to be lured by hot girls anywhere, but pretty girls are not going to be lured away by some hot guy, because if you're a pretty girl you can meet hot guys anywhere. What is actually happening is that the girls are in Rome in the beginning of the movie, and they're getting harassed pretty badly by guys, and so they're lured away by the allure of beautiful spas in Slovakia. It's a safe haven from guys, and all the harassment and near-date-rape experiences that they're having while in Italy. And let's just say they would have been a lot better off staying at home.
MTV: You've also said we're going to get a bit deeper into the torture organization. How so?
Roth: The film is also following two guys who go through this experience to kill somebody. And we know them really well, and they are very, very likeable and they're very normal. It seems like there's nothing psycho about them, except they are looking for some excitement in their life because they are bored. ... That's going to be a parallel story. We see it from the girl's perspective and we see it from the client's perspective. We inter-cut both stories until they all meet in this horrible place. So, we're going to learn everything about the organization, all the minutiae of it.
MTV: The first "Hostel" contained an unusual mix of torture, nudity and little kids. So, tell us: What's going on with the Bubble Gum Gang this time around?
Roth: Let me tell you, the Bubble Gum Gang are back, and they're nastier than ever. The kids play a big part of this movie; it just gets really sick and dark with the kids. We filmed some horrible, sick stuff with the children, and I think that's going to be the most shocking and upsetting part of the movie, but the kids are so much fun. They're so funny and they are fluent in speaking Ali G, and I taught them all Borat. So you'd see these 5-year-old gypsy kids who only speak Czech, and they'd be going: "My sister is number-one prostitute in all Kazakhstan!" It was great.
MTV: As any horror fan knows, the number-one rule is that you can't kill a little kid onscreen. But I'm thinking you're the type of guy who might not follow that rule.
Roth: [He laughs.] Let's just say I broke one of the oldest horror movie rules! The first was really inspired by all those images that you saw coming out of Iraq with torture. And this one is much more about the new fear, which I think is the killer next door, that people are terrified of the psycho killer. It's that guy who stands next to you in church, who babysits your kids and coaches Little League, who has never done anything wrong, but has something inside them that makes them do something horrible.
MTV: Why is the trailer in German?
Roth: That came from Tim Palen, the marketing head at Lionsgate. He said, "We should do something in German or Slovak," and he wrote the trailer and sent it to me. ... It's based on a scene from the movie. You can now go in, and we will see how a person picks the tools for their [torture] room; it's called the checkout room. All the tools are on a wall, and you see number one, number two, number seven, number 12; that scene in the script is what sparked Tim's idea. He was like, "I want to do a teaser trailer, a variation of that tool checkout."
MTV: Last time, producer Quentin Tarantino helped you out with some great torture ideas. What's his input been this time around?
Roth: Well, Quentin was actually really busy on [the "Grindhouse" movie] "Death Proof" this time. ... His main comments about the script this time were, "I couldn't put it down."... There really wasn't that much, gore-wise, that Quentin added this time around, but there was one instrument in particular that he suggested I use, which plays a key part in one of the torture scenes.
MTV: Jay Hernandez recently said that he hadn't filmed any scenes yet, and that he wasn't sure if his schedule would allow it. Will you be able to get him in?
Roth: He's in. We're definitely doing it. We're wrapping in Prague now, and then we're going to Iceland, and then I have to wait until Jay has a break — which could be Thanksgiving — and we'll have a block of time where we can shoot the scenes where we need Jay. We're going to shoot Jay in a chunk, probably in one week, so it's going to be tough for him, but it's worth it.
MTV: What are you shooting in Iceland?
Roth: We're shooting some spa scenes — if you go to BlueLagoon.com, that's the location. I love Iceland. I had the Icelandic character in the first one, and I just look for any excuse [to go] there and have someone else pay for it.
MTV: Halloween's here, and nobody's a bigger horror geek than you. Give us five scary movies to put us in the mood.
Roth: Well, for Halloween, you can't go wrong with "The Shining"; it's just so creepy and disturbing, and only Stanley Kubrick could make a little kid riding on a big wheel around a hallway absolutely terrifying. Number two, I'd say "Cannibal Holocaust" (1980), because it's the movie that "The Blair Witch Project" stole everything from, and there's a wonderful DVD that came out. To horror fans, it's considered the nastiest, most hard-core violent film ever made.
You need "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" with Leatherface — the original "Chainsaw." I love the '70s look, I love the grain and the zooms, and just the way Leatherface looks — that's one of the best Halloween costumes of all time. Number four would be Sam Raimi's "Evil Dead," the original, because it just shows you what you can do when you have a camera. He made that movie when he was 21 years old, and when you think of him making "Spider-Man" now, it's just incredible.
Then there's a really disturbing horror film — people have to see "Audition" (1999) if they haven't seen it. It's like an hour-and-20-minutes of buildup, so you have to be patient if you're going to watch it, but the last 15 minutes are excruciating. ... I screamed like a little girl when I saw that movie.
MTV: When you were a little kid, what did you dress up as for Halloween?
Roth: When I was 11, I went out as Alex from "A Clockwork Orange," and as I got older I'd pick more obscure costumes. One year I went as Bunny Boy from the movie "Gummo." He walks around in his underwear with a dead cat, and I marched in the Greenwich Village parade covered head-to-toe in mud with a dead cat! I remember, out of thousands and thousands of people who all went dead silent when they saw me, one person was like "Hey, 'Gummo'!" That one guy really, really got it. I've also gone out as Ben Stiller in "There's Something About Mary." ... I'll take a tissue and drip it in egg whites, and have it dripping off my left ear. There's also been Gaear Grimsrud, Peter Stormare's character from "Fargo." I streaked my hair with white, and I walked around with a leg like I had just put Steve Buscemi through a wood chipper.
MTV: So, what is one of the masters of horror going as for Halloween this year?
Roth: You know, I've spent the last two weeks absolutely covered from head to toe in fake blood. I might just go as Scott Baio — I found the yellow Izod shirt that Scott Baio wears in "Zapped!" (1982), and I think if I do that and blow dry my hair the right way and wear white sneakers and some acid-washed jeans, I just might have a chance. To make it complete, I'd have to have a Playboy Playmate on my arm. But then again, I will be in Iceland — so there's a good chance that I could find someone.
Czech boost for 'Hostel II'
IPC also helped secure financing
Source: Variety
Eli Roth, who just wrapped "Hostel II's" Prague and Iceland shoots, ventured into more than a new threshold for gore on the project.
The energetic, prankish helmer returned to the Czech Republic for the seven-week production, bringing his Raw Nerve company into partnership again with Prague's Intl. Production Co. because, he says, "They know how to put the money on the screen."
The four-year-old Prague-based venture run by American Dan Frisch and Brit Philip Waley was recommended by "Pink Panther" editor George Folsey, Roth's friend, after its work on the laffer, involving 27,000 extras in the town of Teplice. The recommendation, along with the country's "beautiful rotting buildings," won over Roth for the first "Hostel" shoot.
IPC also helped secure financing, which didn't hurt on such a risky project. All part of the plan, says Frisch, who conceives of his small production company as a boutique business, taking on a select few clients and offering them production guarantees and line producing in addition to the typical production services.
The four-year-old Prague shingle, which moved beyond servicing work after doing "Running Scared" in 2004, typifies a Czech trend in which service providers are assuming more responsibilities and involvement.
Prague's Stillking has just taken on packaging and financing for Ehren Kruger's adaptation of the novel "The Keep," but has been co-producing pics from "Casino Royale" and "The Illusionist" to "Everything is Illuminated" and "Van Helsing."
Prague's Milk and Honey outfit has also moved into financial guarantees and other involvement, says prexy Tomas Krejci, both to remain competitive and to tap into government funds. In the absence of film incentives from the Czech government, production service companies must get their clients VAT refunds of 22% on goods and 5% on services. In order to qualify, he says, real financial responsibility must be shown. "It's necessary that the company in Prague be in ownership of the material."
Although Roth's budget more than doubled with "Hostel II" and Sony has kicked in $19 million in P&A, his first outing spent just $2.2 million on production in 38 days.
Czech shoots can't compete dollar for dollar with Bulgaria or Romania these days, but Frisch says, "We don't sell cheap; we sell value."
Roth, for his part, has ramped up the creepiness in "Hostel II," which carries on his tale of kidnapped backpackers sold off to sicko businessmen for dismemberment with a custom built train car, a bigger torture complex ("We've got actual theme rooms") and more locations in derelict buildings around Bohemia.
This time around, the victims are college girls in Rome (Lauren German, Bijou Phillips and Heather Matarazzo) who foolishly take the advice of an exotic Czech woman, who recommends a lovely spa vacation in Bratislava, Slovakia.
Slovak tourist authorities were already annoyed by the gory "Hostel," and this time around, Roth cast former Slovak culture minister Milan Knazko as one of the heavies.
Roth is clearly thrilled at auds' recent taste for torture. Roth, an NYU grad with an encyclopedic knowledge of his craft, points to the greats of American horror from the 1970s, like "Jaws," "The Exorcist" and "The Shining," and says "I felt American horror had gone soft. I wanted to amp it up."
More fresh visions are on the way, says Frisch, such as psychological thriller "Site 9" and a WWII true story set on the soccer field, "Baker's Dozen," which IPC is developing.
"Hostel III" is all but signed as well, to possibly follow Roth's next shoot, Stephen King's "The Cell," although "Hostel II's" release date will affect timing, Roth says.
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ew.
i hate kids today.
That looks like an 'arrachera' (flank steak) :drool:
Fernando Wins!! :bravo:
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From Eli Roth:
Quote: The poster just got approved by the MPAA. This is now officially the U.S. teaser poster, hitting theaters soon. How ****ing insane is that?!? I feel like the luckiest director on the planet to have Lionsgate handling my film.
If you didn't vomit during THE HOLIDAY, you'll definitely puke on your way home when you see this up on the wall at your local multiplex.
I couldn't be happier.
That poster perfectly sums up exactly where Roth's films go wrong.
Another jump in ick meter
The 'Hostel II' lobby poster flaunts a close-up of flayed flesh. Love it or loathe it, it's a big time for gore.
Source: Los Angeles Times
Take your kids to the theater next week to see the barnyard fable "Charlotte's Web" and you might find yourself confronted in the lobby by a jolting new poster that is pure slaughterhouse — and the latest example of pop culture looking more and more like an autopsy photo.
The posters due to arrive in theaters nationwide next week are advertisements for "Hostel II," a horror movie due in the summer from Lionsgate Entertainment. The director of the film, gore merchant Eli Roth, conceded Friday that he was "pleasantly surprised" that the extreme image was approved by the Motion Picture Assn. of America; every inch of the poster is packed with splayed organs and moist tissue.
"My jaw was on the ground when I first saw the poster," Roth said. "It's unbelievably beautiful. It's one of the most beautiful posters I've ever seen."
Beauty, clearly, is in the eye of the beholder on this one. On the website hubs of horror and genre fans, debate is already underway about the poster and "Hostel II"; several postings on the Harry Knowles website Ain't It Cool News dismissed the movie as "torture porn" and railed against the poster as a sick display. Others wondered what exactly their peers were so upset about.
"You guys," one fan wrote, "must hate walking down the meat aisle in the grocery store."
And just what is that meat anyway? The photo used for the poster was taken by Tim Palen, co-president of theatrical marketing for Lionsgate. He said he was inspired by some "elegantly photographed" cuts of meat he saw in a magazine. With the help of a "great butcher in La Crescenta," Palen experimented with different slabs of animal flesh until he found the perfect look. "It's wild boar," he said proudly.
Roth also compared the image to something "you might see at a high-end market in the meat section." He contends that "if you saw it at Gelson's, it would make you want to buy a steak."
The image still gave pause to the advertising reviewers at the MPAA, where the image was given "more consideration and review than most posters," Palen said. (MPAA spokeswoman Kori Bernards said Friday she did not have any direct knowledge of the "Hostel II" images.) For what it's worth, Roth said he believes the photo is so close-up (and bloodless) that the tissue image is abstract enough to stay within MPAA taste guidelines.
"That's the beauty of it," he said. "It tells you everything you need to know about this movie, but it doesn't give away anything about the story. When you add the words 'Hostel II' it becomes extremely disturbing. You know those poor girls are in for it."
The "poor girls" would be the onscreen victims in "Hostel II," which is now in post-production in Los Angeles. The sequel carries on from the 2005 movie that presented an Eastern European hotspot for the bored rich who pay to torture and snuff tourists; both of the films are produced by Quentin Tarantino.
The fact that the posters are going out a few days after Christmas could add to criticism from conservative quarters about this kind of film. Just this week, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights railed against the Christmas Day release of "Black Christmas," a slasher flick with a yuletide theme. Palen said he has been anticipating squeamish reactions from exhibitors who might blanch at putting posters in their lobbies.
"The reaction has been just the opposite, though," he said. "There's a buzz out there and we got calls [from exhibitors] asking how soon they can get them."
Lionsgate has shown a flair for movie posters that elicit visceral reactions, which is a branding must for a horror film. The signature images for the "Saw" movies, for instance — such as the two mangled fingers of a corpse for "Saw II" — clearly spoke to hard-core fans while turning the stomachs of just about everybody else.
Then again, stomach turning is in right now. The autopsy had a banner year and, unlike the quaint days of "Quincy, M.E.," every twist and turn is now shown to the audience in high-definition. Television gore, especially, has increased by the gallon since "The X-Files" whipped out the rib separators in the 1990s.
On television, the hit "CSI" franchises continued to specialize in high-craft, slow-motion bodily harm. Their success in syndication means that viewers across America can watch detailed eviscerations and decapitations at dinnertime. Then there's "Dexter," the critically acclaimed Showtime series that, literally, showed its star sliding around in the blood of a serial killer's victims.
At theaters, Mel Gibson's "Apocalypto" carved up characters with the sort of verve once reserved only for fringe genre films. In video games — easily the year's most dynamic entertainment market — the gore is not only relentless, it's accepted as a core aesthetic.
Some observers say the cultural crackdown in recent years on sexual content (especially following Janet Jackson's breast flash during the Super Bowl) has pushed creators, especially on television, to use violence instead of sex to titillate — more red and less blue.
Roth attributes it all to the climate of fear in post-Sept. 11 America and the clammy apprehension caused by the coffins and war-zone images coming home from Baghdad.
"I think all of this takes the temperature of culture. People are afraid. A horror movie is the last place where it's OK to scream in public."
The director claims his meaty movie poster is a public service, in a way. "This makes it very clear what my movie is .... Nobody is going to think they are walking into 'Happy Feet: Part II.' Not after they see that poster."
NUDE, NO HEAD
Source: Page Six
BIJOU Phillips is about to give a bunch of geeks the thrill of their lives. The former wild child is starring in the new Lionsgate slasher flick "Hostel Part Two," and the racy poster for the movie is being unveiled this weekend at the Comic Con event at the Javits Center. The poster shows Phillips nude and beheaded. Even better, the photo shoot for it was at the El Royale apartment complex in Hollywood with all the windows open. "The neighbors got an eyeful," said our spy. Not that Phillips cares - she's an exhibitionist.
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Looks fan-made to me. Unless they actually pay people to sloppily photoshop two previously existing posters now.
can't wait for the next version with the TMNT credits at the bottom.
Watch a New Clip from Hostel: Part II!
For those of you dying to catch even the tiniest glimpse of Hostel: Part II, a brand, spanking new international clip has just arrived online. The clip itself is the same one that played a few weeks ago at New York ComicCon, and it actually features three separate scenes which, I imagine, are the tamest of the entire film.
http://www.hostel2.it/clip/index.php
Acting For Tarantino To Torture In Prague: Eli Roth's 'Hostel: Part II' Column
Director discusses sequel's European shoot, filming a part for 'Grindhouse' in first exclusive MTV News column.
By Eli Roth
In an exclusive ongoing column for MTV, director Eli Roth is chronicling the making of his eagerly anticipated summer sequel, "Hostel: Part II." In this inaugural installment, Roth takes us through the first part of the film's European shoot.
The shoot was awesome, but exhausting. I went right from making the first "Hostel" into the sequel without a break, and one of the main reasons was because I wanted to get back to Prague. I had heard so much about it over the years but had never been there before I made "Hostel." It's one of the few places that truly lived up to the hype. Prague was one of the only major cities not bombed in World War II, so it still has all the architecture and old buildings from 500 years ago. It's filled with cobblestone streets, beautiful girls and bars that go all night. The people are great, and I pretty much kept my entire crew intact from the first film, so it felt like making a movie with my friends. We had a blast making the first "Hostel," and I was eager to get back and get shooting.
I worked on the script while I was touring and doing press internationally from January through March, and I finally sat down and wrote the script for "Hostel: Part II" in April and May of last year. I went location scouting in July and was back in Prague in August prepping the film to start in September.
Right before I started shooting, Quentin Tarantino asked me to audition for his "Grindhouse" film. I was like, "Uh, Quentin, I'm not an actor," and he said, "Come on, man, you were hilarious in 'Cabin Fever.' Just come in and read." I figured that only for Quentin would I do something like this, so I drove down to Venice Beach to his casting office — while I was in the middle of casting "Hostel: Part II." I got to the casting office and saw the name ahead of me on the sign-in sheet: it was actor Derek Richardson from "Hostel." Derek was like, "What the hell are you doing here?" I just said, "Don't ask me ..."
I read for Quentin's casting director, and clearly Quentin was pleased because he asked me to come in for a callback. This time I went to Quentin's house, and I read for him. It was totally surreal because we're friends, and he's executive producer on "Part II," so he knew that I was about to go to Prague to shoot. I had no idea how I'd be able to act in Quentin's film while shooting my own. I soon had an even bigger problem: I got the part. Quentin's schedule kept getting pushed, so his start date was closer and closer to mine. I told him that I'd give him a week to shoot out my part, but anything more than that was going to be irresponsible to "Part II." Quentin said, "Just come to Texas and film for a week, we'll figure out a way to make it work."
So two weeks before I started principal photography on "Part II," I flew from Prague to Texas and acted in Quentin's movie. It was so much fun. It was like getting a master class in directing right before my own shoot. And then I got on a plane, flew to Prague and literally went right into rehearsals with the cast. I was pretty jetlagged and exhausted, but also energized from what we'd just shot. It also was a good exercise for me to be in front of the camera, because it helps keep me in tune with what the actors are going through and how they'd want to be treated. The torture scenes are tough to shoot, and I want to make sure the actors feel comfortable and safe enough to really go insane. We filmed some brutal, brutal scenes, a number of which gave crewmembers nightmares.
Any time I'm shooting a scene and I'm the only one who can look at the monitor, I know I'm on the right track. The cast was amazing, and they all pushed themselves and opened up in ways they never had before on camera. We had a 45-day shoot, most of it in the Czech Republic, with a second unit running around Europe filming in France and Monaco. My brother Gabe directed my second unit, and at one point when I was shooting during the day and at night, he'd come in with his crew and we'd hand off the cameras and they'd shoot all night. They called themselves the soup crew. His footage looked amazing, and it was fun to have 24-hour Roth brothers directing during the last week of shooting. He'd come in at around 8 or 9 a.m. and I'd say, "OK, we missed this shot, this shot, we need an insert here ..." and he'd just add it to his list. Then he'd take the cameras, and I'd come in the next morning, and they'd have this exhausted, up-all-night-torturing-people look, and I'd take the cameras back and shoot whatever I had planned. It worked out really well, because basically you get double the amount of shots you would on any given day.
'Hostel' Helmer Eli Roth Says Horror Should Have No Limits: 'It's All Fake'
'I want sex and violence mixed together. What's wrong with that?,' writer/director wonders at NYC Comic-Con.
Source: MTV
NEW YORK — No less than Quentin Tarantino has called "Hostel" writer/director Eli Roth "the future of horror." Strong words when only two of your films have been released to the big screen.
At just 34, Roth is relishing his standing as one of the new icons of the genre. His anticipated sequel "Hostel: Part II" is set for release June 8. MTV recently spent the day with Roth as he spoke at New York's Comic-Con. While there, the outspoken lover of blood and nudity opened up about his upcoming flick, why he wants no limits to violence in film and his beef with "Ocean's Twelve."
MTV: You're often lumped in with other young horror directors like James Wan ("Saw") and Alexandre Aja ("The Hills Have Eyes"). Do you enjoy being associated with that group?
Eli Roth: We've been referred to as the Splat Pack, which I think is a cool title. Hopefully I'm not the Judd Nelson of the Splat Pack. Preferably I'll be the Rob Lowe. We're all just trying to bring back really bloody, violent, disgusting, sick horror movies.
MTV: It's a noble pursuit.
Roth: Yeah! I feel like in the '90s, horror just lost its way and everything became so safe and watered-down. When I go see an R-rated horror movie, I want lots of violence. I want nudity. I want sex and violence mixed together. What's wrong with that? Am I the only one? I don't think so.
MTV: What kind of trajectory would you like to see horror take in the future?
Roth: We're in a really violent wave and I hope it never ends. Hopefully we'll get to a point where there are absolutely no restrictions on any kind of violence in movies. I'd love to see us get to a point where you can go to theaters and see movies unrated and that people know its not real violence. It's all pretend. It's all fake. It's just acting. It's just magic tricks. Hopefully we'll get to a point where people realize movies don't cause violence. It just reflects the violence going on in the culture. I'd love to see us get to a point where you can make a movie and not worry about the limits of the violence. Then I think they'd get so violent that people would get bored of it.
MTV: What do you say to critics who call your work "torture porn"?
Roth: It's so funny how critics will always quickly reduce horror almost to a subgenre of pornography. I do feel like terms like "torture porn" are offensive. When I see a critic refer to "Hostel" as torture porn it feels like in the 1950s parents going, "I don't want you to listen to that rock and roll. It's dangerous!" It makes me laugh. It makes me feel like they're out of touch.
MTV: Do you feel a sense of fraternity with the rest of the so-called Splat Pack?
Roth: We don't go out like the Bloodhound Gang, or go back to the clubhouse and watch movies — although we kind of do in a weird way. We were all kind of the outcasts, so there's a real bond between everyone. None of us are competing for the same projects. Everyone is doing their own thing. And when a movie is successful, it helps all of us. When "House of a 1,000 Corpses" was successful, it helped "Cabin Fever." When "Cabin Fever" was successful, it helped "Saw."
MTV: What was appealing about going right back into another "Hostel" film for you?
Roth: I watched ["Hostel"] with audiences all around the world and everybody loves the kids and the girls getting run over and the eyeball getting cut out, but more people told me that they were freaked out by the American businessman in the locker room with the gun going like, "What's it like to kill someone?" And they'd say, "I want to see a movie about that guy." So with "Hostel: Part II," I said, "Let's really go deep into the minds of those businessmen. Let's watch the process from start to finish."
MTV: What scenes are audiences going to be talking about as they leave "Hostel: Part II"?
Roth: You've got to have those signature scenes. Let's just say there's one scene that's going to make every girl in the audience cringe and scream, and there's one scene that's definitely going to make every guy in the audience cringe and scream.
MTV: Do you have a third "Hostel" in mind?
Roth: It's not something I'd do, but never say never. I did parts one and two without a break, so my head has been in that torture factory every day for literally two years now. I need to switch it up. I need a little sherbet in between to just cleanse the palette.
MTV: Tell us about your fake trailer in "Grindhouse." Could you imagine the fake film "Thanksgiving" spawning a full-length movie?
Roth: Oh, absolutely. The trailer was so much fun. It's all gore and nudity. It's all money shots, bodies being chopped up and people being stabbed and cheerleaders stripping on trampolines. It's three minutes of pure happiness. The feature will never live up to the trailer unless we just do 90 minutes of that. For "Grindhouse 2," I think there's a very strong chance of shooting it. Quentin and Robert and the Weinstein Company love the trailer so much they're already asking me, "Where's the script for 'Thanksgiving'?"
MTV: You have yet to work with a truly large budget. "Hostel: Part II" is only a $20 million movie, right?
Roth: I wish. If you combined all three of the budgets of my movies it wouldn't even equal the salary of one castmember on "Ocean's Thirteen."
MTV: Are you itching to do something on a larger scale?
Roth: It's interesting, because I've had opportunities to do franchise movies. Once your movie opens at #1, you're offered everything. There were movies like "Halo," and they're remaking "The Hulk" again, and "Die Hard 4," and I just thought I'd rather write and direct and do my own thing. I don't need to jump to a $100 million movie. There were some books I was interested in. I was like, "I'd love to do 'The Phantom Tollbooth' or 'In the Heart of the Sea.' " But the truth is, right now I love writing and directing my own stories. I really wanted to adapt the "Tripods" trilogy, but it went to another director.
MTV: How do you feel about your competition this summer at the box office?
Roth: It's going to be the Splat Pack vs. the Rat Pack. They were like, "We're going to open ['Hostel: Part II'] in June." I'm like, "What else is opening then?" They're like, " 'Ocean's Thirteen.' " I'm like, "Well, that's awesome, because it will be fun to go up against George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon." But you know what? I still want my money back from "Ocean's Twelve." The biggest heist they pulled in "Ocean's Twelve" was taking the public's money. I want my money back before I see "Ocean's Thirteen."
MTV: No one will say that about "Hostel: Part II" though, right?
Roth: No. I think people will say, "I want my lunch back," after "Hostel: Part II."
Quote from: Eli Roth
"I'd love to do 'The Phantom Tollbooth'"
A future entry in the "My childhood just died" thread, perhaps?
New Trailer here. (http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?name=movies&id=1555574&vid=140688)
BOING!
EDIT: Oops, I meant BORING!
Shoot Ends, 'Insane Editing' Begins: Eli Roth's 'Hostel: Part II' Column
Director talks about end of filming, appearance in Tarantino's new flick in exclusive MTV News column.
By Eli Roth
In the third installment of an exclusive MTV News column, director Eli Roth discusses the conclusion of shooting his upcoming "Hostel: Part II" as well as his role in "Grindhouse."
In Prague we finished filming with Jay Hernandez and Jordan Ladd. We had to wait because of Jay's availability with his TV show ("Six Degrees"), but it was well worth the wait. I love working with Jay, and I was really happy to get to work with Jordan again. Jordan was the first person I cast in "Cabin Fever," and we've been close friends ever since. We all had a great time. I also got to direct a great European actor named Luc Merenda, who starred in some awesome 1970s Italian genre films. I've always been a huge fan of his, but he's been retired from acting for 15 years and now runs a highly successful antique business. I tracked him down in Paris and asked him to play a part and he said he'd come out of retirement to do it. It was a great thrill for me, and it was really fun for the other actors as well.
After we wrapped I jumped right into shooting my trailer for "Grindhouse," which I'm not allowed to talk about under penalty of death, but it's one of the most ridiculous, violent, fun things I've ever shot. That you'll be able to see when "Grindhouse" opens April 6, along with my acting debut, assuming I haven't got completely hacked out. Although Quentin did tell me that one of my dialogue scenes made it onto the soundtrack, so hopefully that's a good sign I'm still in there.
Jay Hernandez and Jordan Ladd changed their flights so they could stay an extra day to be in the "Grindhouse" trailer, and we had a really fun time filming. It felt like 7th grade, when I'd shoot movies in my basement with my brothers and my friends, just having fun with the camera and doing whatever we wanted. And thanks to global warming, Prague was really nice this fall, so we were able to shoot our exterior scenes without a problem.
I'm always depressed when the shoot ends. It's so much adrenaline every day for so long that when it's over you realize you've become addicted to it. During shooting you're up every day before 5 a.m., and you don't stop until you pass out at 11 at night. You can't let up for a second or you fall behind in your shooting schedule, but somehow, after a few days of shooting, your body snaps into it. And then suddenly, after a few months, you come to a screeching halt and go into the editing room, where it's you, your editor and your footage.
I am very lucky to be working with one of the best editors in the business, George Folsey Jr. George cut such classics as "Animal House," "The Kentucky Fried Movie" and "The Blues Brothers," and produced such classics as "Trading Places" and "An American Werewolf in London." George's son Ryan edited "Cabin Fever," and George edited "Hostel." We have a great time working together, which is key, since we're spending about 12 hours a day in a small dark room with just the two of us. But it is strange going from 200 mph every day with questions being fired at you nonstop from all departments, to just sitting in an editing room looking at everything you shot. I have this nervous, uneasy feeling in my stomach that does not go away until the movie's completely cut, so like a compulsive addict I have to spend every day and night in the editing room. But my insane editing neurosis is a whole other blog.
Eli Gets His Geek On For Comic-Con: Roth's 'Hostel: Part II' Column
In exclusive MTV News column, director talks about taking break from editing to promote film.
By Eli Roth
In the fourth installment of an exclusive MTV News column, director Eli Roth discusses his recent trip to February's New York Comic-Con to promote "Hostel: Part II."
As a huge convention geek, I have to say I love doing conventions and panels. I was that guy waiting in line for two hours for Tom Savini's autograph at the Fangoria Convention in 1996, so for me to actually get to appear on a panel and talk to fans is a pretty big thrill.
In 1999, when I first moved to Los Angeles from New York, I didn't have enough money for admission to some horror convention, so I sneaked in the back. I got busted for not having a handstamp, but only after I did two loops around the floor, so I was still able to use my money to buy a bootleg VHS cassette of "Torso." (Hey, it was unreleased in the U.S. — how else was I supposed to get it?) A few weeks ago, I took a break from the editing room and flew east for New York Comic-Con, where I showed the first footage from "Hostel: Part II."
I knew things had changed at Lionsgate since "Cabin Fever" when I showed up at the airport and realized I was flying on the Lionsgate jet. I didn't even know Lionsgate had a jet. I was like, "Were you guys keeping this thing a secret from me during 'Cabin Fever' and 'Hostel'?" It turns out they got it about six months ago, and I figured that since my films had helped pay for it, I was more than entitled to a seat. I'm almost sorry I flew it, because now I'm completely spoiled and my new obsession is finding a way to have a private jet take me everywhere, even, like, to Whole Foods and the gym. Until then, my monkey chauffeur, Mr. Pemberton, will just have to suffice.
Anyway, we landed in New York, and I checked into my hotel, stuffed my face with sushi and passed out. With both of my previous films, I had finished the movie before doing any interviews, but now with the June 8 release, I'm doing press and finishing the film at the same time. It was actually nice to switch gears and take a break from all the postproduction, to remind myself that there is light at the end of the tunnel.
On Friday, February 23, I woke up early and worked out in the hotel gym so I'd be awake for the interviews. Unfortunately, they were doing some construction at the gym; about a half-hour into my run on the treadmill they started painting, and I got too dizzy and had to leave.
I went to breakfast and had an Olivia Newton-John sighting, which was pretty tremendous for me since I was in love with her when I was 6. At first I thought that the paint at the gym was making me hallucinate, but once I heard her accent, I knew it was her. I wanted to tell her I was in love with her when I was 6, but I thought that might make her feel old and opted not to. I mean, what do you say, "Hi Olivia, I have 'Magic' on my iPod as a joke so I can blast it in my car with the top down at red lights to make people uncomfortable"? Nobody wants to hear that. I let her eat her breakfast in peace. And by the way, I do have "Magic" on my iPod. I also have the whole "Grease" soundtrack. I've never really admitted that before. Where was I? Oh yes, interviews.
I started the interviews around noon and went right through until dinner. By now I know a lot of the journalists, some of whom even visited me on the set while I was shooting, so a lot of the interviews felt more like hanging out with friends and talking about horror movies. Lionsgate set up a suite at the hotel; one by one the journalists came into the room, I showed the clip and we chatted about the movie. By the end of the day I was wiped out. I took a nap and had dinner with friends, and Saturday afternoon I started doing press again.
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They should remove the 'Quentin Tarantino presents' before the movie tanks like Grindhouse...
Theres already a work print of this out there in DVD quality.
Don't pay to see it. Stop supporting this meathead Tarantino jock flick dreck. Yeah, it could be cool, but don't pay for it.
But how many of us were actually planning on seeing it, for free or not?
Guarantee they blame the shittyness of this movie on piracy.
Even if it makes a billion dollars in it's first day, if the reviews are bad, they'll blame it on piracy.
well, i'm seeing it in theaters... it's the only reason i liked the first one. you're SUPPOSED to yell at the screen and get scared with the rest of the audience...
it's FUN!!!
Eli Roth Checks Out Of 'Hostel'
Source: MTV
It's no secret that the "Saw" and "Hostel" films are closely linked; torture, complex plots, and a willingness to test the MPAA would pair them together, even if the franchises weren't housed at the same studio. But, as "Saw IV" continues production, "Hostel: Part II" director and MTV blogger Eli Roth pointed out one significant difference between the two series: There'll be no more sequels to his. Ever. "There are no more 'Hostels'," a defiant Roth revealed to us this week. "There is 'Hostel' and 'Hostel 2' and that's it. It's like 'Kill Bill Volume 1' and 'Kill Bill Volume 2.'"
When "Part II" hits theaters June 8th, it will pick up at the same gruesome moment where last year's torture blockbuster ended - much like such Roth favorites as "Halloween 2." Calling out lame sequels that manufacture plots simply to bring back characters, the down-to-earth writer/director insisted that his two freaky flicks have said all there is to say.
"I hate a lame third sequel, and I don't want there to be one," Roth said. "I wish 'Beyond Thunderdome' didn't exist; I wish there was just 'Mad Max' and 'The Road Warrior.' I really wasn't crazy about 'Spider-Man 3.' I wanted it after 'Spider-Man 1' and 'Spider-Man 2,' but with 'Spider-Man 3' I was really disappointed when I saw that film; that will never happen with 'Hostel.'"
Instead, Roth will turn his attention to the upcoming projects "Cell" (an adaptation of the Stephen King zombie book) and "Trailer Trash" (a "Kentucky Fried Movie"-like flick filled with fake trailers).
No way this shitty movie is getting an R rating. Not the version I watched last night.
Eli Roth is a douche. There are scenes in this movie that I can picture Eli Roth writing and then directing. Like just thinking "Okay, and here I want her to rub her tits while the blood sprays all over them. Oh my god, YES! This is so gnarly!! Now, when she rings the doorbell and the hacksaw comes flying out I want her to say with a smile on her face "Someone rang?" Oh my god! Such an awesome one liner! I'm incredible!! Oh my god!"
If this dick head had made a movie in 1999 he wouldn't even be making one right now. Instead, he'd be directing shitty rent to own commercials in your local area.
I feel sorry for the teenager.
Oh, and Bijou Phillips is UGLY.
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A queasy-does-it guy
Grown-up kid Eli Roth says his stomach-wrenching films tackle social ills too. Tell that to the usher cleaning the floor.
Source: Los Angeles Times
A gore merchant isn't born, he's made.
Consider the case of Eli Roth, whose gory, lucrative films are often described as "torture porn" or with an especially pungent new term: "gorno." This Friday, Roth's latest, "Hostel: Part II," will land in theaters with a splatter — the plot finds three nubile coeds trapped in an Eastern European sadism club where fiends on vacation pay to slowly carve up strangers. If the thought of watching that makes you nauseated, well, Roth can understand. He's been on the other side of that popcorn bucket.
Roth spent years vomiting in the middle of matinees; he threw up so often that the theater ushers near his home in Newton, Mass., would groan when they saw him coming. He was easy to spot too, because he was so young. He was all of 8, for instance, when his parents (a Harvard University Medical School psychiatrist and a New York artist) took young Eli to see a creepy science-fiction film called "Alien." In no time, the boy was racing for the lobby with his mouth covered. That also happened to be the day Roth decided that he wanted to be a filmmaker.
"That was the one, I left there and knew that was what I wanted to be when I grew up," he recalled as he cruised around the Warners lot in a golf cart. "It sort of took over my life." He started making Super-8 movies with brothers, friends and pets as stars and, by his bar mitzvah, he asked the rabbi to introduce him as a film director-producer ("I was already a hyphenate"). The cake was shaped like a director's clapper and, in case anyone thought he wanted to make romantic comedies, was splattered with red food-coloring.
All of this would be merely quaint if Roth wasn't making some of the most disturbing films in memory. He is at the forefront of a movement in Hollywood to not only resurrect the blood-and-breasts-style slasher films of the early 1980s but also take them to new heights of realistically based narrative. Many have drawn-out murders, usually of bound victims who sob, hyperventilate, shriek for mercy or (here's that word again) vomit. It seems audiences can't get enough: The three movies in the delicately titled "Saw" series cost a combined $15 million to make and have grossed $222 million in U.S. theaters.
The filmmakers are called the "Splat Pack," of course.
"We have a friendly competition, and we have to keep in touch while we're making the films just to check on what scenes everyone is doing," Roth said of the club. He added that he reworked the script of "Hostel: Part II" and a scene of a girl getting her stomach-piercing jewelry ripped out when the filmmakers of the upcoming "Saw IV" cheerfully bragged that they had already covered that creative ground. It was a shame, Roth said.
"I had been looking for stuff you could do to girls that would be awful but not so horrifying that you felt like you couldn't watch it or you felt like you had been kicked in the stomach. I want people to be scared and walk away upset, but I don't want them to feel like they need to take a shower."
It's a fine line — but that's "gorno" for you.
Best of the worst
HERE are some choice moments from the Roth highlight reel: A half-naked cheerleader on a trampoline does a leg split and lands, crotch-first, on a knife, in a spoof scene he contributed to "Grindhouse;" in the first "Hostel," a young woman loses an eye while she is being tortured with a blow-torch, but it still dangles from the socket — until her rescuer uses scissors to snip it off.
There's another scene in the faux trailer he made for "Grindhouse" where a young guy with fresh-scrubbed features is parked in a convertible with his gum-chewing girlfriend. He talks her into performing oral sex on him but a heartbeat later she looks up to see that his head has been lopped off. Oh, by the way, in that last scene, Roth himself played the bad-luck lothario. He kept the head prop as a souvenir.
Roth describes his films with the pride of a young man who has just won the science fair and can't understand why everybody is so upset. Understanding his movies and its audiences, he said, is as simple as understanding the difference between a merry-go-round and a roller coaster. "If you're going to see a movie like 'Cheaper by the Dozen,' at the end you're supposed to feel good. The point of a horror movie is you're supposed to feel terrible."
Mixing blood and lust is a trademark of Roth and his contemporaries, as it was for the 1980s splatter films that influenced them. That has made him the target of women's groups and media-content commentators.
Given all this, you would expect Roth to be a creepy guy, but he isn't — which, come to think of it, may be the creepiest thing of all. Roth is 35 and comes off as a sunnier Ben Stiller, or maybe Carson Daly's perky brother. He is more film nut than nut job and more fan boy than bad man. He gets excited about going to horror-fan conventions. He also has some weird medical history: He endured a painful skin disease that flared up in his early 20s — it directly inspired the flesh-eating virus story of his first film, "Cabin Fever," in 2002. He doesn't live in a cave, though. Last year, the bachelor was named "fittest director" by Men's Fitness magazine and he has a horse named Bara that he keeps on a ranch in Iceland.
But to most fans his name is synonymous with grisly, sexualized horror. That's why a young woman walked up to him not long ago and rubbed her bloodied hand on his shirt as a flirty overture. "It was so disgusting," Roth recalled. "She said, 'You like blood.' I shouted at her, "I like fake blood, not real blood." I mean, c'mon. The bad thing too, she was really hot."
Even horror fans are divided. When "Hostel" hit No. 1 at the box office in 2005, movie critic (and self-proclaimed horror fan) David Edelstein wrote in New York magazine that he was alarmed by the flurry of torture films. "Some of these movies are so viciously nihilistic," he wrote, "that the only point seems to be to force you to suspend moral judgments altogether."
Rose McGowan, an actress who had a gun for a leg in "Grindhouse," surveyed the influence of the Splat Pack and spoke for many when she told Rolling Stone: "All they do now is think about ways to torture women, primarily. I don't really get that. What is this, a manual for young, budding serial killers?"
But to dismiss Roth as a hack would ignore the opinions of some impressive peers. "Lord of the Rings" director Peter Jackson hailed "Cabin Fever" as "brilliant" and invited the then-unknown Roth to the New Zealand set of "Rings." Quentin Tarantino saw that same film, labeled Roth "the future of horror" and signed on as a producer for both "Hostel" films.
Young movie-goers are certainly buying in and, according to audience surveys, the crowds are split fairly evenly by gender. Hollywood is on board, and no company more so than Lionsgate, which is the brand behind the "Hostel" and "Saw" movies. A turning point for the company was "Cabin Fever," which cost $1.5 million to make and has grossed over $20 million in the U.S. alone. Its success led the studio to expand significantly and specialize in horror.
The men behind these movies have a club called the Masters of Horror. Roth is a member; so are filmmakers Alexandre Aja ("The Hills Have Eyes"), Darren Lynn Bousman ("Saw II," "Saw III") Neil Marshall ("The Descent"), James Wan ("Saw") and Rob Zombie ("House of 1,000 Corpses"). Each is young, well-educated, hyper-aware of film history and proud to the point of giggling that they have slightly tilted Hollywood away from big-budget action movies.
Roth says that his films are political commentary. On a Fox talk show he created a stir by blaming President Bush for the recent torture horror. He called it all art responding to a world of ugly violence and a country disdainful of other cultures.
In "Hostel," Roth said, the ugly Americans who get carved up (or carve others up) are purposeful examples of "consumption in our culture." The slow-rip murders are also meant to help us deal with the blood of the real world. "You look at the war, you look at 9/11, the tortures at Abu Ghraib, the things going on down at Guantanamo — these are real horrors and we are all scared. There's no place left to scream in public. I think these films help people deal with the real world."
That presumes quite a bit. Look on the Internet at the chats of Roth's fans and geo-politics and cultural angst are not exactly frequent threads. Roth shrugs that off.
"There were things I saw in movies that resonated with me later, like in 'Night of the Living Dead,' the fact that people were killed and turned into zombies and just by habit went to the mall and just look for living things to consume," he said. "It was about American consumption and dehumanizing effects of technology and corporate America."
Sitting next to little Eli through most of those horror films were Sheldon Roth, the noted psychiatrist and professor, and Cora Roth, a well-regarded painter. The filmmaker's father dismissed any guff he took from other patrons as "that bourgeois sensibility.... We knew Eli was a good boy." The thing he remembers is seeing the passion in his son's eyes for the stories he witnessed there in the dark.
At his bar mitzvah, Roth talked his parents into having him cut in half by a nervous magician with a chain saw. Marvello the Magnificant was sweating bullets because he had never done the trick before, and his "victim" kept screaming that the blade was really ripping into him. Roth loves telling the story. "He kept whispering to me, 'Just hold still, for God's sake.' But I just kept screaming."
The father has a theory on why his nice-guy son is so good at peeling flesh. "It's as Plato said, 'Bad men do what good men dream.' My son puts his dreams on the movie screen."
But is there film life after all that blood? Filmmaker Roth has long modeled his career on Sam Raimi, who made "The Evil Dead" and other horror classics before putting the knife down and going into the crowd-pleasing "Spider-Man" franchise. Roth may do the same, but his next project, an adaptation of Stephen King's bloody novel "Cell," is certainly staying in his old familiar red zone.
These are good days but not perfect. "I feel like nothing really scares me anymore. I don't want to be jaded, I don't want to be bitter," Roth said glumly. "But not a lot of movies freak me out. It's sad, really."
ugh. if i never read the words "splat pack" again it will be too soon. i dont think any person other than a lazy journalist would EVER EVER in conversation use that term to describe who they're talking about. nope, not buying it.
Quote from: MacGuffin on June 02, 2007, 12:27:32 AM
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i didn't read the article, but this skull is great.
What a dong. I love the Iraq bit he's throwing into every interview. Great way to encourage the complete right off of artwork with ACTUAL political content. God, this guy annoys me.
Eli Roth in 'Hostel: Part II' Flirts Fiddly Line Between Tasteful Terror, Repugnant Repulsion
Source: HollywoodChicago.com
CHICAGO – "It's the difference between hunting a lion and a deer."
Eli Roth, director of "Hostel: Part II," articulated in an interview with Adam Fendelman that view of his "Hostel" men as weighed against his "Hostel: Part II" women. The tellingly revealing statement touches not only on his muse for the sequel but also his take on the female kind and people's darkest secrets.
The concept to calculatingly ferret and torture women was conceived from "Death Proof" – Quentin Tarantino's half of "Grindhouse" – because Roth so fancied Tarantino's violent femmes. Roth regarded the "Death Proof" girls as the new bar for females in horror films. Tarantino executive produced "Hostel: Part II" and Roth acted in "Death Proof" a week before shooting his hostile sequel.
Parlaying a threesome into his own ferocious film world, Roth – who as a horror director fears real blood – seized the opportunity to strike back and grow his successful empire. Undaunted by being dubbed as a masochistic misogynist and forever burdened to dangerously flirt the thorny line between tasteful terror and repugnant repulsion, Roth is a fiddly lad to tag.
On one hand, he's one of the most profitable directors in Hollywood. As the business is exactly that – a business – and as a business is in business to make money, Roth has a knack for translating relatively low-budget films into box-office surprises that send investors to cloud nine.
"'Hostel' was a total one-off movie that was supposed to be a little movie I did between movies," Roth said. "The average budget for a movie is now $80 million. 'Hostel' was made for $3.8 million. Even if it had only come out in a few cities and did $8 to $10 million, it would have been a home run. We didn't even know if it'd come out in theaters."
When "Hostel" opened at $20 million and knocked out "The Chronicles of Narnia," Roth says he was floored at the voracious appetite for his ideas. In total, "Hostel" has raked in $80 million in worldwide receipts.
On the other hand, you get the sense from speaking with him that he's either selling you an alternate reality or he's unaware of what his reality really is. He speaks of greatness he hasn't yet achieved and his dossier hasn't yet produced the timeless classics as he'd like to think.
"In 'Hostel: Part II,' I wanted an unbelievable climax," he said. "The last moment of the film needed to be a showstopper – the end all, be all of horror films – with a great kill and one of best endings ever in a horror film."
The groin yank was at least vile, foul, odious, sadistic, inhuman, malicious, malevolent, wicked, heinous, nefarious, sinful, fiendish – let's see – what other adjectives are there on Thesaurus.com for just plain sick? Let us not forget the silent, slow scene with a grown man pointing a gun at the heads of children in a lineup.
At least he used a silencer. That was kind.
In deliberating the sequel, Roth says he sought to make the "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back" of the "Hostel" series. In truth, though, grouping the two in the same sentence is like contrasting a fine wine that has aged to perfection with a tasty glass of Red Bull that has its thrill rides but may or may not stand the test of time.
Timing is very much on Roth's brain. He describes the ability to be scary to audiences as that which is scary to him. He also plots his stories squarely around what America fears at a given moment in time.
"I was in Prague when Katrina hit. It was like 'Dawn of the Dead,'" Roth said. "Bodies were flowing down the street and there were no police. People went right to a primal state of killing, raping and looting. The army didn't show up for five days. That terrifies me.
"Look anywhere where there's no law. What do people do? They go right to killing. It's something in human nature. Under the right circumstances, anyone can become a killer. When no one's looking, people have that need inside them to control and torture another human being."
With the plot of obscenely moneyed people who drool at the opportunity to bid on the torture and ultimate death of random overseas female tourists, Roth makes the stretch of comparing his fictional story to President Bush's real-world war in Iraq.
"Why is that war happening? It's for oil. It's for money. Halliburton is making those decisions. Do you really think any of those decisions are being made for the good of a country? It's blood for money. It's capitalism to its most extreme. It's very real. We're in Iraq because that's where the money is. That's scary."
Roth bills his work as not just scary but intelligently so. To up the gore ante, he says all you need is another tool – such tools are inspired by torture devices used by the church – and another body. The tough part is making it smarter, he says, and what's really terrifying is the look on the actor's face. It's not the actual graphic brutality.
"I have to compete with films with $100 million ad campaigns along with '24,' 'Nip/Tuck' and 'CSI' on TV. A great horror movie kill can trump everything. If you can do the shower scene in 'Psycho,' the opening in 'Jaws' or another signature scene, then it doesn't matter what movie stars you have or what you spent on special effects because people have got to see that moment.
"That's what 'Hostel: Part II' has. At the end of the film, people will come out saying: 'I've never seen that in a movie.' The ratings board didn't know what to compare this to and that's what people like about me. People see my name and they look for intelligence and originality. 'Hostel' was the one that raised the bar and pushed the envelope further than any film had at that point."
The bitterly divisive debate about the "R" rating for "Hostel: Part II" by the MPAA – instead of "NC-17" – is unsurprisingly viewed by the film's maker as a democratic breath of fresh air. He eulogizes the association's autonomous process.
"With 'Hostel' and 'Saw II,' the MPAA got many complaints. We were under the microscope this time. Before we were under the radar. When 'Hostel: Part II' came in, they were ready for it. It's 'Hostel: Part II'. It's not 'Happy Feet: Part II'. People know what it is. What they built it up to be in their minds was so much worse than what it actually was. We had a great discussion about it.
"I really feel lucky that we have a system like the MPAA. In Germany, they'll say: 'Take these scenes out or the movie's not going in theaters.' It's government censored.
"In Japan, 'Hostel' didn't come out. They said: 'We're not going to have a movie where an American disfigures a Japanese girl's face.' That's it. There's no discussion. You watch a movie and they say 'yes' or 'no'. Ukraine? No. Singapore? No. In the U.S., we can have a discussion about it and can recut it. It's run by the studios and not the government. It's the only system by which I have a voice and a process."
Whether you deem Roth to be a tormented soul or an explicit genius, there's a method to his madness.
In his view, the stories touch on what people really feel and do – but often don't say or show – and the realities about the most menacing parts of life. To bring what he perceives as such raw honesty to theaters, Roth paradoxically makes his actors feel "comfortable" and "safe" in their bloodied environments.
"These actors go to a very dark place," Roth said. "When they're crying and screaming, it's real. They're stirring up deep trauma and mental anguish. The most horrible, darkest thing in their life is right there on the surface and they're reliving it."
As culture changes, Roth's terror changes.
Next, Roth is fixated on honing in on the dying of the world's bees in the upcoming film "Cell". From human torture to bees? Yes. He's terrified by it. He says a quarter of the bee population is currently dying potentially because of cell phones knocking out the radar of the bees.
"Einstein says the human race is four steps eliminated from the extinction of bees," Roth said. "Once the bees go, flowers won't get pollinated, vegetables won't grow, we won't get oxygen and the human race will die without bees. Cell phones could be killing off the bees. I want to show there's something brewing.
"With all this wireless stuff that's pumped into the air to make our lives convenient, there's a fear that it's doing something we can't even see. 'Cell' explores that fear. You have to know what the fear is going to be to know what the horror will be. It's not a movie about the fear of technology. It makes the human behavior real. Then the film is timeless."
This movie doesn't deserve any controversy. It's just dumb and annoying and immature.
Quote from: Ghostboy on June 10, 2007, 05:19:04 AM
It's just dumb and annoying and immature.
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Quote from: Ghostboy on June 10, 2007, 05:19:04 AM
This movie doesn't deserve any controversy. It's just dumb and annoying and immature.
It does. It deserves controversy for the press it's getting for being gory instead of a shitty movie.
It's an AWFUL movie, nothing good about it. In the beginning why do they even have Jay Hernandez there? What's the point of that?
And that "twist" ending isn't a twist at all, it's just silly.
One of the worst movies that some people consider good I've ever seen.
I hope people start realizing Eli Roth for the HACK he is.
Man, this guy fucked it up-- and I liked the first movie. I dug "Hostel" because of it's unpredictability, but this one was so paint-by-numbers. But now that we know the game, why replay it with 3 girls? This film made a point of showing how dangerous it was to even pay to be involved in this organization, so why not just go all the way and make the movie about the businessmen? Every scene with the girls was so boring and tired (just waiting for them to be abducted), and the only time I was intrigued was when the two businessmen were involved, or basically any scene not with the girls. And of course, Roth had to drop the dialogue and do a montage of them getting to the rooms, rather than working on the mood/anticipation.
So much for a "shocking ending" as well. "The 4th Man" numbed me to that move years ago, and as for Graham's turn, well, it's certainly lessened by showing throughout the film that this is not a boy's club, and doubly so for having to off someone that's despised. Just from hearing Roth talk about the film, it's obvious he was too concerned with what the audience liked (like bringing those dumb kids back) in the first flick, rather than trying to take a chance and tell a story with elements that everyone might not agree with.
Eli Roth fucked up.
Goddamn, did he fuck up.
I've been a fan of the man's work since Cabin Fever. Hostel and the Thanksgiving trailer only cemented the deal.
I was actually, genuinely looking forward to this film. He talked a good game, about not wanting to cheat the audience, about expanding what was there originally and giving the audience what they want.
Maybe I'm not the audience he envisioned because Hostel 2 was everything I didn't want. It was what everyone accused the first film of being, while I defended it tooth and nail.
I didn't download this, I waited for the theater, I supported the man and I feel fucking cheated.
The ending was a cheat, the middle wasn't involving at all, the beginning was unfocused.
I'm sure I could sit around with Eli Roth and, over a few drinks, talk about the exploitative merits of Herschell Gordon Lewis, horror sequels good and bad, Dario Argento, Italian giallo, etc... etc... But, unlike his mentor Tarantino, Roth doesn't have the chops for it. Or maybe Roth's influences are more narrow and not as interesting as Tarantino's.
Either way, it looks like David Lynch was a much better mentor for this dude than Tarantino. Though, it's high time Roth stops having a "big brother" filmmaker to hold his hand at all.
I'm still going to hope for the best with this dude's career, though.
Because I am a sucker.
Quote from: Weak2ndAct on June 10, 2007, 01:26:05 PM
This film made a point of showing how dangerous it was to even pay to be involved in this organization, so why not just go all the way and make the movie about the businessmen? Every scene with the girls was so boring and tired (just waiting for them to be abducted), and the only time I was intrigued was when the two businessmen were involved, or basically any scene not with the girls.
spoilers:
that was the only thing remotely interesting about the film, or at least the only thing that offered anything new. the death of the kid was apparently one of the key factors brought up by the groups protesting the film, yet it just felt tacked on. it's obvious roth knows that the films popularity is directly related to the public outcry, so he just pushes the most obvious buttons he can. it's too bad because i enjoyed cabin fever, which was much more fun than the hostel films. when it comes down to it, roth is a showboat. making serious horror isn't his strength. the gag at the end of cabin fever was much funnier than the gag at the end of this one, which felt like a desperate attempt to lighten the mood of the audience as they left the theater.
go see severance, THATS a fun horror movie.
I've always thought of Eli Roth as an immature shock jock of a filmmaker, but with "Hostel Part 2" he can't even succeed at being that.
Unfortunately for Roth, these gruesome scenes of violence are much more depressing and misogynistic than thrilling. I don't care how idiotic he makes his female characters. This is just exploitive. Does Roth really find joy and entertainment in watching a girl get cut to pieces, a boy getting shot in the head, and a woman being beheaded? It sure seems so, and maybe that's the most depressing thing of all. It's even worse that he seems to have approval from a real filmmaker like Tarantino.
This is the last time I ever buy a ticket to Eli Roth.
Since, from what I've gathered here, this movie isn't worth watching, could someone just tell me what the "twist" ending is?
Pretty please? =)
There's really no twist ending. I guess you could say there's a twist third act, but the ending is pretty rote and predictable.
SPOILER
The lead girl is an heiress, and instead of being killed, she buys her freedom and pays to kill the guy who's torturing her instead. She chops his dick off, and then joins the hostel club. And then she tracks down the girl who lead them into the whole thing and chops her head off, and those annoying little kids play soccer with the severed cerebellum. The end.
SPOILERS:
...and the "good guy" is really the "BAD GUY" !!! :bravo:
I'll never watch the film, but I love reading this thread, I love it when xixax doesn't buy into something, it makes me feel proud to be part of this thing.
Quote from: Stefen on May 30, 2007, 08:00:28 PM
Guarantee they blame the shittyness of this movie on piracy.
Source: Cinematical
Eli Roth Talks 'Hostel II' Box-Office, Blames Rampant Piracy, Says 'Cell' Is Now On HoldPosted Jun 16th 2007 6:32PM by Ryan Stewart
Director Eli Roth is speaking out about the lackluster box-office for his latest film, Hostel: Part II, and he's blaming everyone but himself. Roth puts piracy front and center as the reason for the film's performance. "Piracy has become worse than ever now, and a stolen workprint (with unfinished music, no sound effects, and no VFX) leaked out on online before the release, and is really hurting us, especially internationally," he says, before going on to specifically tear into critics who reviewed a leaked copy of the film. "Critics have actually been reviewing the film based off the pirated copy, which is inexcusable," he says. "Some of these critics I have actually known for a few years, and while I wouldn't dignify them by mentioning them by name, I know who they are, as do the studios, and other filmmakers, and they will no longer have any access to any of my films." Roth also advises fans of his that haven't seen Hostel: Part II to "go now, because after next weekend the film will be gone from theaters."
As for the future, Roth says "I am not directing Cell any time soon, and I most likely will take the rest of the year to write my other projects. Which means I wouldn't shoot until the spring and you wouldn't see a film directed by me in the cinemas until at least next fall." He goes on to say that in Hollywood, "the R-rated horror film is in serious jeopardy. Studios feel the public doesn't want them anymore, and so they are only putting PG-13 films into production. The only way to counter this perception is to get out there and support R-rated horror."
:violin:
fucking twat.
Told you guys.
This guys head is so big he is above any kind of criticism. Reminds me of M. Night before he got put back on earth and his right shoulder go tired of resting his big head.
At least M. Night made some good movies, this guy Roth hasn't made anything good, just had one movie that was okay.
i loved cabin fever and i loved hostel part i. this movie was baaaaaaaaaad. wienerdog gets a pretty good death scene, but the rest of the movie is just so blah. i don't know why you all hate eli roth so much. yeah, he's a little annoying and kinda egocentric, but he's a showman. he makes movies for people who want to have a good time at the movies and he does his best to advertise them. he should've moved on from hostel and done something new and original. changing the leads to girls in an abbreviated version of the first just ain't that interesting. especially when there was only one good death. i think the producers must have paid the critics to say that this movie was "appalling" and "disgusting," calling it "torture porn." i wanna know what movie they were watching, cuz i saw some movie about dumb chicks without ENOUGH gore or blood. critics were ACTUALLY complaining that this deserved an nc-17, seriously, this movie was surprisingly tame. the first one had better gore, suspense, social commentary, and nudity. this felt like something that was made quickly and without thought for a quick buck to cash in on the original.
yeah, he may be a sellout and a bit of a douche, but try to convince me that "thanksgiving" wasn't the best part of grindhouse.
I hate Eli Roth because he's everything I hate in a human being.
I guarantee he reads Maxim more than any other magazine, has more than once drugged up a girl at a frat party and had his way with her, his favorite movie is Boondock Saints, he uses the words awesome, gnarly, & tubular more than anyone else should EVER be allowed to, ask him about politics, or whats going on in darfur and he'll give you a blank stare, but ask him whats going on with tomcat and he'll give you the lowdown.
I'd tell this to his face if I wasn't so scared of getting stuffed into a locker by his frat brothers.
it's so easy to make blanket statements about people you've never met. you know the man by his public persona. he knows his audience, and people that like to go see cool/bloody horror movies are teenagers and frat boys, so he tries to appeal to that demographic. i can understand why you'd feel that way, but take a look at the original hostel and you'll see a damning indictment of american excess that's rife for political discussion (like, five minutes worth, at least). good horror has and always will play on people's socio-political fears, and while the original hostel was a movie for frat boys to go "awesome" to while their girlfriends bury their heads in their arms (or laps), it also had some pretty good subtext. it's a movie that was made by a man who clearly loves and knows the genre he's working in. also, if you watch cabin fever and hostel, you can tell that the death, nudity, and general fratboy nature of those films are, albeit slightly, tongue in cheek. it's gratuitous for a purpose.
counter arguments:
1. my friend did some casting work on hostel 2 and said that eli roth was a douchebag in real life, but only because he's a shrewd businessman. he knows how to get what he wants and he's not above intimidation tactics, however, how in fuck are you supposed to survive in hollywood if you're not like that?
2. hostel 2 really was some lazy bullshit.
Of course the only things I know about him is what I get from his persona that he projects in interviews, etc.
Osama Bin Laden seems like a dickhead but I bet he's a really nice guy once you get to know him.
He just reminds me of a swarmy asshole. The type who practices chants in front of the mirror all by himself like "Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug!"
Yeah, I compared Eli Roth to Osama Bin Laden. It doesn't even work cause at least Osama accomplished something (too much?)
Eli Roth discusses Frat Boys and Hostel II on The Treatment with Elvis Mitchell podcast...
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=73330616&s=143441&i=16717147
Quote from: modage on June 18, 2007, 04:42:01 PM
Eli Roth discusses Frat Boys and Hostel II on The Treatment with Elvis Mitchell podcast...
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=73330616&s=143441&i=16717147
Elvis Mitchell = Possibly my favorite educated Uncle Tom.
Whats that show he used to have on IFC? Independent Focus or was that a different one? I don't get IFC here anymore.
i'm really glad this failed. i hope this puts the saws to bed for a while too.
because i never understood this genre. and i love a good scare, and i also think extreme suspense rivals an orgasm from a pleasure perspective. but violence for the sake of violence, the "who can do the grossest shit possible" game these C-list directors play with one another is just retarded. what is the ultimate goal, to get people to throw up? where's the talent in that? anyone can go out and film something really sick. girl gets captured, beated, arm cut off, then force-fed live squirrels and shots of her own blood. boom. hostel 3 right there. now to film something truly suspenseful, so much so that the hair on your neck stands erect, now that's a skill. one that none of these jerkoffs possess.
i'm actually happy that 1408 is getting pretty dope reviews, especially after reading this one: "Listen up, all you Hostels, Saws and other purveyors of bloody terror. Lay down your whips, chain saws and paring knives to watch a truly scary movie."
so yeah, that's what i think about that.
I'm gonna lose this fight, but I prefered it to the first one.
I want to stress that this isn't a good film - it's just more of an interesting one than the first Hostel. I don't tend to go to horror films to be scared, because they don't really ever do that for me. A small part of me always hopes they will, but they never really do. Equally, I don't tend to go to horror films for believable characters and situations. If they happen to crop up (as in, say, Blair Witch or 28 Days Later or or The Descent) then that might be a bonus, but it's certainly no deal-breaker for me. In terms of being well-made, etc., I agree - Hostel 2 is probably not as well-crafted as the first one.
But what I go to horror films for (and I do go, and enjoy them, quite a bit) is generally because I find them interesting for the extreme way they're able to deal with their themes as the most consistently extreme mainstream genre - violence, sex, gender, race... The first Hostel I found xenophobic (the presentation of the eastern bloc), homophobic (the gay guy on the train who turns out to be a client of the Hostel) and sexist (the laughable amount of leering at naked women, the siren-whore characters). I didn't buy Roth saying that it was some kind of critique of marauding Americans abroad because these guys were our main characters and we were certainly asked to root for them - it was definitively all the foreigners, gays and women who were seen as dangerous and 'other'.
SPOILERS
Hostel 2 I had less of a problem with in the way it dealt with its themes. Using women instead of men as its main characters was a good idea I think - it linked it to a whole tradition of slasher and exploitation cinema very nicely, and let it use the sometimes perversely empowering sexual politics of those movies to its advantage.
What I saw was a film about women being sexually victimised by men in the world in general (e.g.: those guys on the train), who then stumble into a situation where that victimisation is amped up to extreme heights (the hostel). One of the these women is stripped naked and cut up by a sexually fucked-up female character, so the first proper nudity is uneasily tied to violence - nicely uncomfortable. One of them was dolled up and made pretty (i.e: put in lingerie) in front of a movie-star-dressing-room type mirror - fitting in with the sexual spectacle of women on display that the film as a whole deals with (the life drawing model, the woman in the magazine getting her leg stabbed, the guy who rapes the woman he came to kill, etc.). You could indirectly see the whole film as being about this situation that's involved in making and screening a Hostel-type movie: hyper-masculine American males paying their money to see (in the case of Hostel's audience) or enact (in the case of Hostel's characters) the torturing and killing of beautiful women, with all the psycho-sexual undertones that come with that.
The fact that the whole film had become about the sexual victimization of women was made very nicely clear at the end by the conclusion being a financially independent woman buying her way out of her situation and cutting off the dick (basically the source of all the problems!) of a man who had raped and tortured her because he called her a cunt - the word that had heralded the start of all the victimizing at the beginning of the film.
As I said, it's not a very well-made film, and I also doubt that Roth had much of this in mind when he made it (though I'm sure he had some inkling), but by putting women in the quite imaginative situation of the hostel that he'd dreamed up but squandered in the first film, I think he automatically made a movie with far more interesting ideas floating around it.
Eli Roth Attacked in Parliament
Hostel: Part II called obscene, brutal and mysogynistic in the House of Commons.
Source: IGN UK
The so-called "torture porn" debate continues to rage, with the issue even reaching the House of Commons earlier this month. The erroneously monikered genre, which includes the likes of Hostel, Wolf Creek and the Saw films, has been roundly, and wrongly, criticised for glamorising violence and torture on screen. And the issue reached a new level of insanity on October 8 when Conservative MP Charles Walker decided to discuss the possession of extreme pornography in Parliament, and used the latest Hostel film as an example.
"I, too, am concerned about what comes over the Internet," he explained. "There is some horrible, nasty and unpleasant stuff. Clauses 64 to 67 are not as good as they could be -- there is potential for contradiction; for example, in the case of a film called Hostel: Part II, which I have not seen but that has been reported on by a number of people I trust. From beginning to end, it depicts obscene, misogynistic acts of brutality against women -- an hour and a half of brutality -- yet that film has been passed by the British Board of Film Classification for public release to people aged 18 and over.
"I understand that, although the Bill will not make that film illegal, it could make it illegal for someone to take stills from that film, because they could be deemed to have a purely pornographic nature. If it were deemed that stills from a film such as Hostel: Part II were of a pornographic and unacceptably violent nature, it seems madness that that film should be allowed on general release."
That opening sentence, in which Walker admits he hasn't even seen the film, immediately negates everything that follows, but I nevertheless got in touch with Eli Roth, the film's writer-director, to see what he thought about the statement. And Roth was annoyed to say the least...
"I'd like to thank Charles Walker for what could arguably be the single greatest public endorsement this film ever received. He might as well wear a t-shirt saying 'Buy Hostel 2 on DVD October 23rd' while addressing the members of Parliament. It's incredible that in this day and age a Member of Parliament would propose making it illegal for people to take stills from a movie because 'people he trusts' told him it was obscene. Why bother to see the film if you have people you trust to form your opinions for you? What other laws are 'people he trusts' recommending he propose? I hope Charles Walker never sees the film, because then he might see that the film's actually quite anti-violence and would then retract his statement. That would be the worst disaster of all."
Eli continues: "I hate to disappoint Mr. Walker, but there's no actual blood or violence in Hostel: Part II. Someone should explain to him that movies are pretend, and that no one's actually really hurt, and that any stills from the movie are pictures of people in food colouring and latex."
Harsh words, but I'm totally with Roth on this matter, especially as I took several photos while visiting the set and would rather not got to prison for posting them online. Mercifully, nothing actually came of Walker's statement, so Hostel: Part II will still hit shelves on Monday, and I predict that its release won't spell the end for civilised society. Instead, the world will keep on turning, with filmmakers continuing to work without fear of restriction or censorship while politicians continue to discuss subjects they know nothing about.
What an incredibly HUGE disappointment. After praising the first one for it's originality, this one is predictable and cliched. All mystery of the torture factory is gone. So what we're left with is waiting for the victims to be captured and, like the Saw films, wanting the creative deaths. This movie doesn't have them, and very little death at that, and no gore whatsoever. In fact, the only torture the movie had was on it's audience.
*SPOILERS*
I knew so right off the bat when I anticipated Hernandez's "It was all a dream" in the hospital. From then on out, I was one or two steps ahead of the movie, knowing that what you think is going to happen, is not so (the spike anchoring the boat; the blowtorch lighting the candles). This film falls into my number one pet peeve of horror: the characters here are so dumb that they deserve what they get and instead of rooting for them to get away, you can't wait for them to die. For example, Dawn Weiner is missing the next morning, gone with a guy who just the night before Beth warned not to go with. So instead of worrying about and going to go look for her friend, she goes to a spa. It feels like Roth wants to make a statment about feminism (the objection to the word 'cunt,' the woman winning in the end), but his female characters are stupid and no better than the men they are disgusted by, that it has an adverse reaction.
The flick had a smattering of ideas that could have been fleshed out (pun intended); I liked the bidding war and the guys choosing their weapons and gearing up, like boxers before a fight. So if Eli had stayed with exploring how the syndicate worked, it might have made for new ideas.
Exactly.
As a horror fan, I enjoyed both Cabin Fever and Hostel, and Roth seemsed to have both a competent understanding of the genre and a love for it as well. Yet, none of that is on display here.
I really kept waiting for it to get better and it never did.
You might never watch the film again, but before you trade it in for a few bucks in store credit, you can give those commentaries a chance... listen to Tarantino congratulate Roth, Roth congratulate Bijou Philips, Bijou Philips congratulate Roth, and shitty defenses for a shitty film.